As UTT has reported on numerous occasions, for both the Global Islamic Movement and the Marxist/Socialist movement, the primary focus is in the information domain (propaganda, deception operations, etc).

For the Global Islamic Movement’s leading edge – the Muslim Brotherhood – their methodology is “Civilization Jihad” by OUR hands. They get our leaders and key organizations to do their work for them.

Getting the U.S. State Department to write the constitutions for Iraq and Afghanistan (2005) which created Islamic states under sharia – thus fulfilling Al Qaeda’s objectives in those nations – and getting a four-star U.S. general (Petraeus) to go on international television to condemn a U.S. citizen for exercising his First Amendment rights to burn a book (the Koran) – thus enforcing the Islamic law of “Slander” – are two simple examples.

At the Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan played his role knowing full well there would be a predictable response from Mr. Trump. A response for which our enemies were prepared.

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Republican leadership and people in the Trump campaign did not even have fore-knowledge of Mr. Khan’s participation in the convention and, thus, did not do their due diligence or conduct a basic background investigation on Mr. Khan to prepare for a response.

They were operationally blind.

Mr. Trump made statements regarding Mr. Khan and his wife, and the trap was sprung. It was not Hillary Clinton nor the Democrat Party that fired the first salvo at Trump Headquarters.

Mr. Trump was hammered by Gold Star mothers, the VFW, Republican leaders, and others. This was a home run for the enemy.

This is warfare in the information domain. This is “political warfare,” and is never done willy nilly. It has purpose, and is a part of a larger strategy.

There is also an abundance of evidence Mr. Khan is an agent of a foreign power (Pakistan) who just conducted an extremely well-executed information operation against a U.S. Presidential candidate.

All the players responded as predicted, and all patriotic Americans should be gravely concerned.

If the Trump campaign does not figure this out quickly, his supporters will be separated, pitted against each other, and dissipated. The enemy is engaging in the information warfare battlespace, and the Trump campaign appears oblivious to it.

In 2012, Michele Bachmann courageously led the charge in Congress and put forth evidence from the largest terrorism trials in American history revealing massive Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the federal government. She called for key Inspector Generals offices to investigate.

The attack on her came from Senators Marco Rubio and John McCain, and other prominent Republican leaders.

Civilization Jihad by OUR hands.

Khizr Khan is a suit-wearing jihadi. He adheres to sharia, and believes in submitting the world to sharia (Islamic law). Mr. Khan has written clearly that sharia must be followed to the letter and the Koran “is the absolute authority from which springs the very conception of legality and every legal obligation.”

This is, by the way, in direct contradiction of American law and government, the foundation of which are the “Law of Nature” and “Nature’s God,” not sharia. Americans should know this the next time Mr. Khan waves a copy of our Constitution in our faces.

If we are to truly understand the threat we face from the Global Islamic Movement and the Marxist/Socialist movement, we must know their primary battlefield is in the media, not on a piece of open ground on which tanks and troops engage each other.

The Free Beacon was the first to report it here. The story was also carried by Breitbart here.

In July 2014, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (MN) filed a similar bill called the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2014.

The Muslim Brotherhood has already been designated a terrorist organization in Bahrain, Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

UTT encourages all readers to review this bill as it serves as a good summary of the violent history and nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. You can read a copy of it HERE.

The prominent Muslim Brotherhood groups in the United States include, but are not limited to:

Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and all it’s subsidiaries; International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT); Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR); Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Muslim Students Association (MSA); Muslim American Society (MAS); North American Islamic Trust (NAIT); Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA); Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA); Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America (AMJA); North American Imams Federation (NAIM); U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO); American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); American Muslim Alliance (AMA); Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA); Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA); Muslim Legal Fund of America; Council on Islamic Education (CIE)/Institute on Religion and Civic Values (IRCV); Holy Dove Foundation; Gulen Institute and all related schools; Turquoise Foundation; International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO); Minaret of Freedom Institute; Mosque Cares; Mosque Foundation (IL); Muslim Communities Association; Islamic Associations of Palestine (IAP); and over 80% of the nearly 2200 Islamic Centers/Mosques in all 50 states.

***

I encourage you to go to John Guandolo’s Research & Resources page where he has provided a wealth of information on the Global Muslim Brotherhood Jihad Movement. The very last item in the menu titled “What can I do?” is excellent.

To sign the Freedom Center’s petition to stop the witch-hunt against Rep. Michele Bachmann, click here. And please spread the word about this petition far and wide!

Israel has many passionate supporters on Capitol Hill, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle. These are men and women who are deeply committed to Israel and understand that Israel is the US’s only reliable ally in the Middle East and America’s most vital ally in the world today in light of the rise of radical Islamic regimes, movements and leaders.

Now that Obama has officially entered his second term in office, Israel enters a period unlike any it has experienced before. It will face a hostile US president who does not fear the voters. Moreover, it faces a US president who is so hostile to Israel that his first serious act after his reelection was to appoint Chuck Hagel Defense Secretary, (and John Brennan CIA Director).

As I wrote last week, I believe that Israel will not be the hardest hit by Obama’s “transformative” foreign policy over the next four years. As an independent state, Israel has the ability to diversify its network of strategic allies and so mitigate somewhat the hit it will take from the Obama administration. The US, and first and foremost the US military, will not be so fortunate.

Not surprisingly, Israel’s biggest defenders in the US Capitol are also the most outspoken allies of the US military and the most concerned about maintaining America’s ability to remain the most powerful nation on earth both economically and militarily. They are as well, Obama’s most outspoken critics on the Hill.

For their outspoken criticism, and their competence, these men and women have been targeted for political destruction by Obama and his allies. Last November we saw this leftist machine outgun and so defeat Cong. Allen West in Florida and Joe Walsh in Illinois. Both men were targeted by Obama’s smear machine that included, among other things, J-Street endorsements of their opponents, and rancid attacks against them.

One of the voices that Obama’s machine has spent millions of dollars trying to silence is that of Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

As a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and as a contender in the Republican presidential primaries, Bachmann has been one of Israel’s most passionate and articulate defenders and one of Obama’s most effective critics on everything from federal spending to Obama’s abandonment of the US-Israel alliance to his opening of the US federal government and intelligence apparatuses to members of the Muslim Brotherhood – that is to members of a movement dedicated to the destruction of the American way of life.

For her efforts, Rep. Bachmann has been the target of repeated media smear campaigns, often joined by skittish Republicans like John McCain who failed to recognize the danger of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise in Libya and Egypt, and failed to understand the danger that the penetration of the US federal government by Muslim Brotherhood members constitutes to US national security.

I have had the privilege and pleasure of meeting with Rep. Bachmann on several occasions over the years. She is one of the most intelligent women I know. And her grasp of the nature and importance of the US-Israel alliance is extraordinary. So too, her understanding of the challenges to US national security is clear, educated and sophisticated.

Watch for instance these speeches that she has delivered in recent months.

The day she announced her candidacy for President:

And at the Values Voters Summit shortly before the Presidential election:

In the past, every time that I have written about Cong. Bachmann, I have been bombarded with comments from readers who say that they cannot believe I can support her, since they claim, she is such an extremist. But Cong. Bachmann is not an extremist at all.

What she is is a victim of a very successful smear campaign undertaken by people who recognize her talent, conviction, intelligence and effectiveness. They set out to destroy and marginalize her, just as they set out to destroy and marginalize Mitt Romney and West and Walsh and many others, because they perceive these leaders as a threat to their agendas.

Today Cong. Bachmann is the target of a new leftist smear campaign, organized by the far Left People for the American Way. The campaign involves a petition that has reportedly been signed already by 178,000 people demanding that House Speaker John Boehner expel Rep. Bachmann from the House Select Committee on Intelligence.

The proximate cause for the petition is a series of letters Bachmann and five other (wonderful and similarly courageous) Congressional colleagues penned to the Inspectors General of the Departments of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the State Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice asking for the IGs to conduct an investigation of the ties senior officials in these departments have with the Muslim Brotherhood.

For her efforts, Bachmann was condemned not only by the Left, but by Senator John McCain as a bigot and a McCarthyite.

But she is none of these things. And last month, her concerns were borne out when the Egyptian magazine Rose al Youssef published an article about Muslim Brotherhood operatives in senior positions in the Obama administration. According to the article, these operatives have transformed the US “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world, to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.” (Here is the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s translation of the article.)

People for the American Way (PFAW) has launched a new campaign against Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who, after her recent re-election to Congress, has been re-appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

A PFAW-sponsored petition with 178,000 signatures is to be presented to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Monday 21 January 2012 to protest Bachmann’s HPSCI appointment.

Although it does not say so specifically, the PFAW petition likely refers to a set of letters signed by Rep. Bachmann and four Congressional colleagues – Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Tom Rooney (R-FL) and Lynn Westmorland (R-GA).

The letters were sent in June 2012 to the inspectors general of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State and the Office of the Director of National Security (ODNI). The letters note that U.S. foreign policy has undergone a dramatic shift in the direction of open support for the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and question whether that policy shift may be the result of Brotherhood influence operations.

Given that the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding case had established with voluminous documentary evidence from the Muslim Brotherhood’s own archives that its mission in America is “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within,” Congressional requests, most particularly from the HPSCI, that inspectors general look into the possibility of Brotherhood penetration into the highest levels of the U.S. government would seem to be most appropriate.

As the debacle of the Islamic Awakening continues to churn across the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region, and Muslim Brotherhood operatives consolidate their sharia rule in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt (and move closer to ousting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad), the collaboration of the U.S. government in the Brotherhood’s “grand Jihad” is as critical to the jihadis as it is inexplicable to defenders of genuine democracy both at home and abroad.

As Rep. Bachmann and her colleagues rightly pointed out, U.S. policy, once implacably opposed to the march of Islamic jihad, shifted dramatically during the years following the 9/11 attacks. At the same time, individuals with close links to the Muslim Brotherhood were named to advisory and appointed government positions.

Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at RadicalIslam.org and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez served for 20 years as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The Leftist advocacy group People for the American Way (PFAW) has launched an all-out war against Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN). On Monday it plans to present House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) with a petition bearing 178,000 signatures, demanding that Bachmann not be reappointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Michael Keegan, president of PFAW, explained Bachmann’s crime: “Michele Bachmann has used her position on the Intelligence Committee to spread baseless conspiracy theories and smear the reputations of honorable public servants. Speaker Boehner himself called her actions ‘dangerous.’ It’s mysterious, then, why he has chosen to reward her reckless extremism with continued access to sensitive national security information and a powerful platform for her agenda.”

Since Boehner has indeed previously thrown Bachmann under the bus, he may be susceptible to this appeal; if he is at all fair-minded, however, he will recognize not only that Bachmann deserves her place on the Intelligence committee, but that she may be more deserving than any of her colleagues of such a place.

For while Bachmann was widely criticized and ridiculed for daring to suggest that Muslim Brotherhood elements had infiltrated the U.S. government, corroboration of her allegations has recently come from an unlikely quarter: Egypt’s Rose El-Youssef magazine, which asserted in a December article that six highly-placed Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators within the Obama Administration had transformed the United States “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.” (A translation of the article is available from the Investigative Project here.)

According to the Investigative Project, “the six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.”

These represent many of the individuals and groups about whom Bachmann had raised concerns. For example, Bachmann’s letter last summer to the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security stated that Elibiary had “extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood” and “sympathy for Islamist causes,” and accused him of “gain(ing) access to classified documents.”

And indeed, in 2011 investigative journalist Patrick Poole reported that “Elibiary may have been given access to a sensitive database of state and local intelligence reports, and then allegedly shopped some of those materials to a media outlet.” According to Poole, Elibiary approached “a left-leaning media outlet” with reports marked For Official Use Only that he said demonstrated rampant “Islamophobia” in the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). The media outlet declined to do a story, but what was Elibiary doing shopping the Official Use Only documents in the first place?

Poole checked with Steve McCraw, director of the Texas DPS, who “confirmed that Elibiary has access to the Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community of Interest (HS SLIC) database, which contains hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports and products that are intended for intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies.” Said McCraw of Elibiary: “We know that he has accessed DPS documents and downloaded them.”

There have been questions about Elibiary’s true allegiances for years. He was one of the speakers at a December 2004 conference in Dallas titled “A Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary.” The visionary in question was none other than the founding father of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

When I questioned him about his appearance at such a conference, Elibiary claimed that he hadn’t known what kind of conference it was going to be, although he didn’t explain why he went ahead and appeared there anyway once he found out. Among those who found this explanation wanting was journalist Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News, whose skepticism angered Elibiary. The great moderate subsequently threatened Dreher, telling him: “Expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe.”

As the Benghazi story played out in the media, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham emerged as two Republican voices spearheading the fight against the White House’s ridiculous narrative. As the Muslim Brotherhood gains power in Egypt, a serious examination of the Brotherhood is increasingly critical to our national security.

Senators McCain and Graham led the charge against Rep. Bachmann this past summer when the Minnesota Congresswomen raised concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence and more specifically about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide Huma Abedin and her connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. At the time, McCain railed against Bachmann on the Senate floor:

These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way. These attacks have no logic, no basis, and no merit and they need to stop. They need to stop now.

Actually, the accusations were both specific and substantiated. Rep. Bachmann responded by saying she was concerned about “the serious national security concerns I had and ask[ed] for answers to questions regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical groups’ access to top Obama administration officials.” Senator Lindsey Graham also attacked Bachmann, saying:

The person saying it (Michele Bachmann) has no idea what they’re saying because they’ve never met (Huma.) She is about as far away from the Muslim Brotherhood view of women and ideology as you possibly could get. She’s a very modern woman in every sense of the word, and people who say these things are really doing her a disservice because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

However, Bachmann’s accusation was never that Huma Abedin wasn’t “a modern woman.” It was that Ms. Abedin had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, a fact that neither McCain nor Graham can dispute.

Two months later, on September 11th, multiple violent assaults took place on Americans in Egypt and Benghazi, Libya. As we now know, the Obama administration covered up the true nature of the attacks and blamed it on a YouTube video.

The disturbing truth is that the reason for the repeated mentions of the video may be the Obama administration’s longstanding work to help aid the Muslim Brotherhood in censoring critics of Islam. About a week after the 9/11 attack in Benghazi, an event happened that went largely unnoticed in the election-focused United States when a French magazine published cartoons of Muhammad that fueled more Islamist ire:

Essam Erian, acting head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, told Reuters: “We reject and condemn the French cartoons that dishonor the Prophet and we condemn any action that defames the sacred according to people’s beliefs.”Calling for a U.N. treaty against insulting religion, he added: “We condemn violence and say that peaceful protests are a right for everyone. I hope there will be a popular western and French reaction condemning this.”

That U.N. treaty against ‘insulting religion’ that the head of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood called for is something that the Obama administration has been actively working with Islamist nations to ratify for years. As Professor Jonathon Turley has pointed out:

…the Administration is legitimating the prosecution of religious critics and dissidents with this initiative. It should immediately end its support for the standard and reaffirm the protection of religious critics in the United States.

Senator McCain and Senator Graham aren’t telling the American people that the Obama administration used the Benghazi attack to promote the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda of silencing critics of Islam. That appears to be the purpose of President Obama’s speech to the United Nations on October 25th, where it’s no coincidence that he mentioned the YouTube video six times. The idea that the Obama administration is working to silence critics of Islam isn’t just a theory; the Obama administration put this affront to American First Amendment freedoms into action after Benghazi.

Hillary Clinton told Charles Woods, the father of slain ex-SEAL and Benghazi hero Ty Woods, that the Obama administration would “make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” This wasn’t just bluster. The filmmaker was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison, just as Secretary of State Clinton said would happen. It’s one of the most outrageous acts in the entire Benghazi affair and indicates a Muslim Brotherhood influence on U.S. Policy, which is exactly what Rep. Bachmann was concerned about:

The Muslim Brotherhood is not shy about their call for jihad against the United States. We seek answers through these letters because we will not tolerate this group and its affiliates holding positions of power in our government or influencing our nation’s leaders.

Rep. Bachmann was right. Her concerns were not just real, but prescient. Senator Graham and McCain attacked the clear truth that the Muslim Brotherhood is influencing our nation’s leaders. The truth was evident at the time. After Benghazi, it’s glaring.

So it is only proper that the proper federal authorities – Members of Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, the FBI, and inspectors general of various agencies – remain vigilant of foreign entities that attempt to manipulate public opinion or to target national decisionmakers.

Some of our national leaders express a willful blindness about the Muslim Brotherhood. Last year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (pictured at left) testified before the House Intelligence Committee that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “largely secular organization,” and that it had no “overarching agenda.” (See the ABC News video here.)

If one of my students made such a fictitious conclusion on a final exam, he would fail my course.

Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), corrected Clapper in a public statement: “I am concerned that the DNI’s assessment does not agree with recent public statements by senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood nor does it agree with the organization’s publicly stated goals,” Kirk said, calling the organization “radical.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller, who has courted several Muslim Brotherhood front groups, said that some elements are violent and others are not, but refused to provide details.

Others, like Senator John McCain (R-AZ), agree that the Muslim Brotherhood is “anti-American” and even dangerous, but get hysterical at the idea that authorities investigate well-documented concerns about possible influence on US decisionmaking.

Even though the right-hand person to the current secretary of state reportedly is from a Muslim Brotherhood family – her late father, mother and brother were or are members of, or associated closely with, the organization and its front groups.

Did those family connections have any effect on the US policy to back the overthrow of the pro-American government of the Arab world’s largest populous country – leading to its replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood? Policymakers and the public are entitled to know. Five Members of Congress requested a probe to determine the Brotherhood’s influence in the State Department.

The hysteria against those lawmakers, amounting to ad hominem attacks from members of the legislators’ own Republican Party, was creepily vicious. McCain led the charge, in an odd breach of Senate decorum denounced a federal lawmaker by name from the Senate floor. He was echoed by the tearful House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and others, the attacks led to a curious circling of the wagons in parts of the media, including opinion outlets associated with the Republican Party.

Even William H. Webster, Jimmy Carter’s FBI director who became CIA director late in President Reagan’s second term, chimed in with a gratuitous personal attack on Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), pictured, who was the lead signer of the letter asking for the investigation into possible Muslim Brotherhood influence operations against the government. Webster, generally considered an elder statesman in law enforcement and intelligence matters, made a downright weird comment to Newsmax (of all places), slamming Bachmann and calling her comments “morally wrong” and even “illegal.”

Wait a minute – Webster has a distinguished bipartisan career as a judge, FBI director for nine years, CIA director, and head of various government commissions relating to national security. Why in the world would he call a lawmaker’s expression of opinion, and call for a federal investigation, “illegal”?

What’s going on?

I know Michele Bachmann, and I once briefed her for three hours about Muslim Brotherhood influence operations to shape US foreign policy and national security policy. I know many others who briefed her, and the scholars, law enforcement and national security professionals and others who prepared the briefing materials. I know that they are completely justified in their concerns.

Now, when my colleague Diana West, the nationally syndicated columnist, wrote about the controversy, the Washington Examiner spiked her piece. The Examiner, which thrives on politics, didn’t even run news stories on the controversy, West writes.

Watch this issue, everyone. Lots of clues that there’s something deeper. For the past decade, the FBI has been relying heavily on the Muslim Brotherhood and its front organizations as secret sources against presently violent Islamist individuals and groups. I know this firsthand, from many inside sources, from two Muslim Brotherhood operatives who work through front groups, and as an eyewitness. Could the Bureau be using Webster and former FBI agents like Congressman Rogers to attack critics of the Muslim Brotherhood, in order to remain in favor with its Brotherhood collaborators? Rogers has even hinted that Rep. Bachmann should be kicked off the intelligence committee simply for asking for an investigation.

These actions tell me that Bachmann struck such a nerve that the Muslim Brotherhood told the FBI it would no longer cooperate unless she was shut down. Nothing else explains it.

On June 13th of this year, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), and four other Republican House members issued a letter to the State Department’s Deputy Inspector General requesting that various Government agencies investigate charges that the Muslim Brotherhood, (MB), has penetrated into the American government in their well known attempt “to destroy Western civilization from within.” The letter also named other Islamist organizations attempting to do the same, and alleged that Huma Abedin—Secretary of State Clinton’s deputy chief of staff—as well as her family has deep ties to the MB and other Islamist groups.

When Bachmann & Co. issued their letter alleging Islamist infiltration into the highest echelons of the American government, they might as well have thrown a firebomb or hand grenade into the gilded chambers of the Republican controlled House, as well as the Democrat controlled Senate. Indeed, it is Michele Bachmann who has suffered the most from her courageous stand, and she apparently has been designated as Enemy Number One, not only from Democrats, but from the Republican Establishment Elite. Leftists and Islamists must be laughing hysterically as they see Republicans commit verbal cannibalism against one of their own.

Instead of Rep. Bachmann – who sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – being supported by her “colleagues” for taking such a brave stand, she was singled out with relish by 21st century versions of Brutus, Judas, and Benedict Arnold on both sides of the aisles. Rep. Bachmann seemed to be targeted especially by Republicans who verbally pulverized, pilloried and lambasted her. This even included self described “conservatives.” Even the leftist establishment media had a field day with Republicans besmirching Rep. Bachmann’s intentions to wake—and shake—this country up as to what Islamic extremism represents. Indeed, the Republican establishment did a better job than the leftist media in trying to portray Rep. Bachmann as some sort of Islamaphobic racist lunatic. (“Islamaphobe” and “racist” now being the two most dirtiest words in the English lexicon.) A country that survived a mass murder atrocity only eleven years ago seems to have forgotten who the enemy is. To these elitist Republicans, it appears that the messenger (Rep. Bachmann) and her message (Muslim infiltration) are the real enemy. And that message and especially that messenger must be silenced.

The other four signers to the “Bachmann letter” are: Rep. Thomas Rooney (R-FL), Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), who like Rep. Bachmann both serve on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), who sits on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security (a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee). These officials hold very sensitive positions and are privy to intelligence reports that the public rarely, if ever, hears about. It would seem absurd for such officials to jeopardize their own careers if they thought that their allegations were somehow “crazy,” “lunatic,” or nothing but lies or hearsay.

The allegations against Abedin, the Brotherhood, and other Muslim “organizations” appear to be air tight. Attempts to Islamize America through peaceful methods were already thoroughly documented in such books as Infiltration written by Paul Sperry back in 2005. Sperry was also co-author with P. David Gaubiz of the 2009 book Muslim Mafia which continues where Infiltration left off. Another 2005 book that talks about Hezbollah cells in America as early as the 1990’s is Lightning out of Lebanon by Tom Diaz and Barbara Newman.. The books are shocking, disturbing and infuriating as the reader realizes just how inept, callous, ignorant, and arrogant the American government is to Islamist terrorists and extremists in our own backyard.

More recently, experts on Islamist extremism—both domestic and foreign—like Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy and Andrew McCarthy, former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, have thoroughly documented how deeply embedded Islamists have become in the Government and intelligence agencies of the United States.

Another individual who has been trying to wake the American people up from their decades of slumber has been Walid Shoebat. Mr. Shoebat, perhaps more than anyone else should know about Islamist supremacism. A Palestinian Muslim by birth and a radical Muslim at that, Mr. Shoebat became a born-again Christian in the 1990’s and went from being virulently anti-American and anti-Israeli, to embracing both America and Israel. His website has kept up an almost daily account of the “Abedin affair” and those Republicans and “conservatives” who have acted more like collaborators of the Islamists, than American patriots.

It has been eleven years since 9/11 and it appears that Americans—from politicians to plebeians—have gone back to sleep in the face of the Islamist menace. Perhaps most unforgiving is the fact that politicians—particularly Republicans and “conservatives” have tried at every level to stymie Rep. Bachman and her few brave colleagues from making the American people aware of how lethal the Islamist hydra is. Indeed if another 9/11 type atrocity were to take place in America, there is no doubt that Americans would be asking the very politicians who are flaying Rep. Bachmann as to what they have been doing in trying to keep America safe.

But who are these Republicans and “conservatives” who have skewered Rep. Bachmann over the coals and shamelessly played to the leftists and Islamists? Well, they are establishment and elitist Republicans like the 2008 stain of the Republican Party, John McCain, and the vanilla Republican who is House Speaker, John Boehner. Perhaps even more disturbing have been so-called “conservatives” like Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), and the new conservative “kid on the block” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). The above politicians, who apparently are terrified and terrorized of being labeled “Islamophobes” have called Rep. Bachmann’s allegations everything from “ugly” and “sinister” (McCain) to “pretty dangerous” (Boehner), to “the wrong thing to do” (Sensenbrenner), and finally to “I don’t share those feelings” (Rubio). Not satisfied with verbally crucifying Rep. Bachmann, each of the above issued their own panegyrics and odes to the character of Abedin. Indeed, how well do they know Abedin and her “character?” All the while, these craven and cowardly politicians ignore the call for an investigation into undue Islamist influence that grows like a contagion by the day in America. What are they afraid of? And why?

If there is one positive sign from Congress, it is that Congressman and former Lt. Col. Allen West (R-FL) has backed up the claims of Rep. Bachmann. Colonel West gave the American people an excellent and concise history lesson on Islam and Islamic extremism. Indeed, if anyone knows what Islamist supremacism and expansionism is all about, it is Col. West who heroically and valiantly fought against Jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan up close. Also recently backing up Rep. Bachmann has been Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

Though this story may sound old, it is not going to go away, because Islamist expansionism appears to be in America to stay. From the White House to local governments, the call for “religious tolerance” and literal prostration to the practitioners of the religion of Muhammad grows stronger by the day.

Those who laugh and scorn at Rep. Bachmann today, may yet come to rue the day in the future. Islamist extremism may not be going away, but neither is the intrepid Congresswoman from Minnesota. Indeed, it is only true conservatives like Michele Bachmann and Allen West who will be able to have the intestinal fortitude to take on the Herculean task of taming the Islamist menace to American society. Unfortunately, it appears that it will be a long struggle.

Steven Simpson has a B.A. in Political Science with an emphasis on Middle Eastern studies, as well as a Master’s Degree in Library Science. In addition to Canada Free Press, Steven’s previous articles have appeared on the American Thinker, Pajamas Media, Front Page Magazine, and Hudson-NY.org. Steven can be reached at: ssimusa@hotmail.com

Earlier this month author and former Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy gave a terrific, informative, and comprehensive address at The Center for Security Policy at the National Press Club. It was principally an answer and a rebuttal to the criticisms of a group of five House representatives who called for a multi-agency investigation into the backgrounds of numerous Muslims now employed in various capacities in those agencies. One of those letters went to deputy inspector general of the State Department, and one of the persons named in the letter was Huma Abedin, Secretary Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff.

McCarthy was the point man in the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the “blind sheik,” over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He is a Republican conservative with a libertarian bent who writes for National Review.

Abedin, it seems, has very close family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist supremacist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the conquest of the United States (if not its destruction, as well). The Mainstream Media and its allies on the Left immediately charged Michele Bachmann, representative from Minnesota, with alleging that Abedin is an operative or spy for the Brotherhood. McCarthy and others have countered with the facts: that Bachmann, based on knowledge that Abedin especially has had family connections with the Brotherhood, suggested that perhaps she had not been as thoroughly vetted as a possible security risk. Bachmann and her colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee were requesting an investigation of the vetting of Abedin and other individuals. And nothing more.

The ensuing attack on Bachmann gave Senator John McCain of Arizona a chance to grandstand in Congress in Abedin’s defense. Abedin and McCain, apparently, are friends. However, he committed the same error as the mainstream media made, and interpreted Bachmann’s request for an investigation as an allegation of “guilt by association.”

McCarthy not only deflated such a charge in his Center for Security Policy speech, but provided ample evidence that the Brotherhood has indeed infiltrated the highest ranks of government for the purpose of influencing American foreign policy. During his speech, he said he could not now say how many Muslims were in positions of influence or even had access to security-sensitive documents.
However, there was a reservation in McCarthy’s depiction of the Islamic peril. That reservation compromises and qualifies everything else he had to say. These are the troubling paragraphs. The non-bolded Italics are mine:

Now, let me be clear about what I said and what I didn’t say. I said Islamist influences, I did not say Muslims. I don’t know how many Muslims work in the U.S. government, but I feel pretty safe saying there are thousands. As a federal prosecutor on terrorism cases, I had the privilege of working with several of them. These were patriotic American Muslims, and a number of Muslims who may not be Americans but who have embraced America and the West. Without them, we could not have infiltrated jihadist cells in New York and stopped terrorists from killing thousands of people. Without them, we could not have translated, understood and processed our evidence so it could be presented to a jury as a compelling narrative. Pro-American Muslims serve honorably in government, in our military, in our intelligence services, and in our major institutions. We are lucky to have them because they have embraced the culture of individual liberty that is the beating heart of Western civilization. They have accepted the premise of our society that everyone has a right to freedom of conscience and equality before the law. They have accepted our foundational principle that free people are at liberty to make law for themselves, irrespective of the rules of any belief system or ideology. They construe Islam’s spiritual elements and its laws as a matter of private conscience, not as a mandatory framework for society. (Italics mine.) Those Muslims are not Islamists.

What is troubling is that this is a common sentiment among virtually all well-read, knowledgeable, and actively out-spoken anti- and counter-jihadist writers and observers. The only Muslims I would completely trust with my life would be apostates: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan, and a handful of others. These individuals have repudiated Islam in its entirety, discarded it as moral code, and warned that there can be no such thing as a moderate Islam. They have acknowledged that there is no such thing as a “moderate,” peace-loving Muslim, either, that there is no halfway point between obeying Allah’s commands and the laws of man-made governments, which Allah decreed, through Mohammad, were an “abomination.”

Parenthetically, the concept of a conscience is strictly religious in nature, by which one’s explicitly held moral principles are at variance with the more pragmatic or “practical” actions one must take to pursue one’s ends. As such a dichotomy, a conscience serves more as a leash rather than as a guide to moral action.

Let us for the moment take McCarthy’s statement as true – that these “patriotic” Muslims are not security risks and who sincerely do not wish harm on the United States – and pose some important questions:

Which parts of the Islamic doctrine do “moderate,” peace-loving, “patriotic” Muslims reject, or object to, or claim have been misinterpreted by “extremists” and “radicals”? To my knowledge, this question has never been answered, neither by any “moderate” Muslims, nor by any non-Muslims such as Andrew McCarthy or Robert Spencer or Daniel Pipes. It would be interesting to know which parts of that doctrine do not call for death, destruction, enslavement or conquest – that is, the later, abrogating Koranic verses.

And if one could identify those parts, and segregate them from the belligerent, violent parts, could the remainder be justly called “Islamic”? Could a Muslim who adhered to those non-violent parts, and eschewed the violent ones, still be called a “true Muslim”? Would he be any kind of “Muslim”? Would “conservative” or “extremist” Muslims regard him as one, or label him a slacker, or an apostate?

If one has serious reservations about one’s beliefs, yet steadfastly holds onto them in the face of the choices of rejecting them, compromising them, or of being consistent with them, is this a matter of faith, or of a congenital psychological or epistemological disorder? If a private conscience is a personal matter, characterized by a belief in an all-knowing, omnipotent deity who commands one to be moral (without any demonstrable, perception-based, reality-grounded proofs), where would one’s strongest loyalty lay? With the belief, or with secular law? In a crisis, would a Muslim’s personal ‘belief system” trump his purported belief in the “foundational principle that free people are at liberty to make law for themselves”?

Islam’s basic tenets reject any kind of individualism. Islam is inherently hostile to such concepts of individualism and political liberty. Islamic ideology seeks to extinguish those things. To wit, as cited in the Journal Huma Abedin worked on for twelve years:

The Western habit of reducing religion to the function of a residual force, separating it from the state and relegating it to personal and individual affairs, places a deep gulf between the West and other traditions, especially the Islamic. (p. 6) The Islamic world sees the West as arrogant, materialistic, repressive, brutal, and decadent with a lack of human moral values. The domains of Islam perceive Western culture as threatening because of its materialism, imperialism and its championing of unfettered individualism at the expense of the common social good. These hallmarks of Western culture are seen as the source of all troubles. (p. 9) Muslim intellectuals believe that Western modernity is based on a metaphysical foundation of immanence that denies transcendence. Sayyid Husayn Nasr describes, “The embodiment of the Divine Will, as a transcendent reality which is eternal and immutable, as a model by which the perfections and shortcomings of human society and the conduct of the individual are judged….” Sayyid QuÏb described it [modern Islam] as “a disastrous combination of avid materialism and egoistic individualism.” (p. 9) The war that has been declared against Western modernity now seeks a new modernity, and, unlike Western modernity, it is not based on a revolution of rising expectations and infinite progress, but, rather, on the idea of a human mind at peace with itself, committed to the sanctity of man and of nature. The search for this new modernity in the Islamic world gives a high priority to the ideal of justice and the balancing of individual human rights with the rights of the human community as a whole. (p. 11) The most common notion of freedom in the West today is to do, be or say whatever one wishes without intervention. A substantial range of actions by individuals or groups cannot be questioned. But in the Islamic notion of freedom, an individual’s or group’s freedom is restricted if fellow human beings complain of sentimental or sensual feelings as a result of those actions. (p. 11)

All Italics are mine. Need I point out the inherent hostility of Islam to individualism? Islam requires the unquestioning submission of the individual to Islamic authority.

All non-Islamist or non-supremacist Muslims are faced with such a contradiction and the attending problematic conflict of conscience. If they refuse or are unable to question their faith, what then? If one could demonstrate to them that their faith is incompatible with their purported patriotism and loyalty, what would they do about it? Repudiate Islam, or continue to profess double and irreconcilable commitments?

Edward Cline is the author of the Sparrowhawk novels set in England and Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary period, of several detective and suspense novels, and three collections of his commentaries and columns, all available on Amazon Books. His essays, book reviews, and other articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Information Ethics and other publications. He is a frequent contributor to Rule of Reason, Family Security Matters, Capitalism Magazine and other Web publications.

Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann said the backlash and national headlines in the past two weeks over her calls for an investigation into alleged Islamic influence in U.S. government show that political correctness is trumping national security concerns in this country.

“The concerns I have and my colleagues have are real,” Bachmann told the Pioneer Press on Monday, July 30. “We cannot elevate political correctness over national security.”

Bachmann was in Minnesota touring work on the St. Croix River for the new bridge near Stillwater and meeting with small business owners in St. Michael and Hanover.

On her way to a Republican Jewish Coalition event, she took two questions on the firestorm — though replied to others on the bridge — that has followed her comments, which also included linking a fellow lawmaker and a top State Department aide to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The three-term congresswoman from West Lakeland Township said avoiding the subject of radical Islam in the name of political correctness isn’t new.

She talked about the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shooting that killed 13, pointing to a new report that found the FBI made a mistake by not investigating Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, despite evidence of troubling emails between the Army psychiatrist and a Yemeni terror leader.

“This was a preventable disaster,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann and four Republican congressmen asked federal investigators to look into whether State Department officialswere trying to influence foreign policy to help Islamic causes. Bachmann and the others specifically claimed that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., came to the defense of Abedin, chastising Bachmann and the others during a speech July 18 on the Senate floor for the “unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American and a loyal public servant.”

Bachmann later linked fellow U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minneapolis who represents the state’s 5th Congressional District, to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Many other prominent Republicans condemned her allegations, including House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and her former presidential campaign chairman Ed Rollins.

But others have come to her defense, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who wrote an op-ed for Politico in support of Bachmann.

“We have replaced tough mindedness about national security with a refusal to think seriously and substituted political correctness and a ‘solid’ assurance that people must be OK because they are ‘nice’ and ‘hard working’ for the systematic, intense investigations of the past,” Gingrich wrote.

He referenced the Fort Hood shooting in his opinion article as well.

Bachmann again encouraged people to visit her congressional website and read the letters she sent, including a follow-up to Ellison who asked where Bachmann was getting her information.

“If a 15-page letter with 59 footnotes explaining why we have these questions and concerns doesn’t answer that, I don’t know what does,” Bachmann said.

She said she spends 30 to 40 hours a week researching and reading about national security issues and speaks regularly to people who work on these issues for federal agencies. That’s on top of the classified information she receives as a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

“There’s an amazing amount of information available,” Bachmann said. “I take this issue very seriously.”

Michele Bachmann upset the press again. Strange. The news media love handsome movie stars who daringly expose government corruption; why does the press now circle the wagons to pretend that government corruption cannot really exist?

You see, Rep. Bachmann, R-Minn., along with her House colleagues Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Tom Rooney, R-Fla., and Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., wrote the inspectors general of the departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to ask for a national security probe of possible Muslim Brotherhood ties in the administration.

The concerns about possible Muslim Brotherhood influences riled the news mavens, and not only them but Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who proceeded to censure Rep. Bachmann. Yet she and her allies questioned security procedures and levied no charges.

History shows it is entirely reasonable to be on guard against foreign influence in the U.S. government. After all, Harry Hopkins, a Soviet agent, was FDR’s closest White House aide, Soviet agent Lauchlin Currie was another top FDR aide, while Soviet agent Harry Dexter White was a senior Treasury Department official. And not until the release of the Venona papers in 1995 was it certain that the Rosenbergs were indeed Soviet spies. In fact, our U.S. State Department has a track record of security malfeasance, for example, having given high security clearances in the post-World War II era not only to Nazi scientists, but to hundreds of brutal Communists and Nazis known to have massacred millions.

Yet now our managed media obstructs public access to national security issues by singling out Rep. Bachmann for daring to inquire into dangerous lapses in government agencies! The hate speech against Bachmann counts on our forgetting the blood-soaked jihad revelries throughout the Muslim world after the cowardly massacre of almost 3,000 unprotected civilian Americans on 9/11.

Like the ghosts of Shakespeare’s Banquo or Dickens’ Jacob Marley, the specter of the late commie-hunting congressman from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, will always be with us. It is summoned up today, by some on the left, who use it as a tool to thwart legitimate questions about people and ideologies that seek to destroy America.

According to many commentators, the McCarthy spirit has inhabited Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. In several letters to high-ranking government officials, Bachmann has raised questions about Huma Abedin, a Muslim-American, who is deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Bachmann’s concern is Abedin’s relatives in the Middle East, some of whom—such as Abedin’s mother—she claims “are connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.” Abedin’s job, according to Bachmann, “affords her routine access to the secretary and to policymaking.” And, as a result of that access, says Bachmann, “The State Department, and in several cases, the specific direction of the secretary of state, have taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

Sen. John McCain says Abedin is “a dedicated American.” Even if he is correct, the larger issue is being obscured. Many in government and the media don’t want to face the possibility that infiltration is a tactic of Islamic extremists who repeatedly say they want to destroy not only Israel but the “Great Satan” America. Such objectives should be taken seriously, given their violent history.

If you revile Rep. Bachmann, perhaps former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is more to your liking. Charles Moore of the London Daily Telegraphwrites that Blair “… now thinks he underestimated the power of the bad ‘narrative’ of Islamist extremists. That narrative—that ‘The West oppresses Islam’—’is still there; if anything, it has grown.’ It seeks ’supremacy, not coexistence.’” Blair also expressed fear that “The West is asleep on this issue.”

Blair’s view is echoed in Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, a new book by Michael Widlanski, a specialist in Arab politics and a former journalist for mainstream publications such as The New York Times, the Cox Newspapers-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Jerusalem Post. Widlanski’s main point is that political correctness has stifled the West’s ability to understand and fight terror.

Among Widlanski’s criticisms is that the West “came to rely on ‘experts’ without field experience in, or scant knowledge of, the Middle East: people who do not speak the languages, did not study the cultures, and do not know the history. Even worse, some ‘experts’ have been forgiving and even sympathetic to the terrorists and their aims.”

National Public Radio reported last month that “The FBI has conducted more than 100 investigations into suspected Islamic extremists within the military.”

What else would infiltration look like? It’s more than an academic question, or a subject for spy novelists. Those who attack Michele Bachmann should answer it.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is being lambasted for pointing out that Huma Abedin, a top aide of Sec. of State Clinton, has familial ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Even members of her own party are attacking her for her statement about Abedin. The Republican onslaught against Bachmann began with Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ.) statement on the Senate floor Wednesday, saying she had made “sinister accusations.”

The background of this contraversy is as follows.

On June 12, 2012, Congressional Representatives Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks, Lynn Westmoreland, and Tom Rooney sent letters to the Inspectors General (IGs) at the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State and the Office of the Director of National Security (ODNI) seeking information about the influence exerted by the Muslim Brotherhood, a hostile foreign power, inside the U.S. government and especially the Intelligence Community.

As Diana West noted in her 19 July column, there is ample cause for alarm, because, over the last couple of decades, the most senior levels of this country’s national security leadership increasingly have turned for advice to members of an organization openly dedicated to “destroying Western civilization from within” in order that “God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Furthermore, the Supreme Guide of that organization, Mohamed Badi’, declared war on the United States in September 2010.

That was about five months before the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, told Congress that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “largely secular organization” that had “eschewed violence.” It was about nine months before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conferred diplomatic recognition on it. And it was about 18 mos. before Mohammed Morsi claimed the Egyptian presidency in June 2012, with substantial support both visible and behind the scenes from the Obama administration. During the campaign, Morsi, who is a veteran Brother, led massive crowds in chants vowing to take Jerusalem away from the Jews by jihad and suicide bombing. It’s on You Tube. So is the mid-July 2012 film showing Secretary of State Clinton’s motorcade in Cairo being taunted with chants of “Monica, Monica” as demonstrators threw shoes and tomatoes at her entourage.

Rep. Bachmann knows why the Egyptian people feel betrayed by Clinton and the Obama administration: it’s because they’ve put the power of the U.S. government behind the Muslim Brotherhood, the self-proclaimed enemy of America, Egypt, and genuine democracy everywhere. Rep. Bachmann also knows how the erstwhile leader of the free world got to the point where oppressed people like the democratic, liberal, and secular voices in Egypt no longer see America as their champion but rather as the ally of Islamic tyranny.

Bachmann and her four congressional colleagues understand that U.S. foreign policy that presently supports the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood with its commitment to Islamic law (shariah) did not abandon defense of equality, protection of minorities, and the rights of every individual to freedom of belief and speech overnight. They know it was a process of “civilization jihad,” as defined so carefully by the Brotherhood in the 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum on the Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America” which was presented as evidence by the Justice Department in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial. They also know because they’ve studied the 10-part online course about the Muslim Brotherhood created by Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy. And as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Rep. Bachmann also understands how the Brotherhood’s sophisticated, hostile influence operations have infiltrated every agency and department of America’s national security infrastructure.

When the U.S. Intelligence Community Director gets sent to Capitol Hill with notes that say the Muslim Brotherhood is “secular” (and then actually reads them) and the Secretary of State seems oblivious to the fact that the leader of the organization to which she’s just granted diplomatic recognition literally declared war on the U.S., there is something more drastically wrong in Washington, D.C. than mere political correctness. “Influence operations” are the deliberately targeted activities of intelligence organizations intended to affect the perceptions and behavior of leaders, groups, and populations. The key to changing an enemy’s strategy, operations, and tactics is getting inside his decision-making loop. This the Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in doing in a massive way.

The operations began decades ago but shifted into high gear after 9/11, when counterterrorism “experts” realized they had no idea how we’d been taken by such surprise nor why. Unfortunately, when officials sought advice about al-Qa’eda and its jihadist motivations, those best prepared to take advantage of the ignorance and panic were the intelligence operatives of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

Their myriad groups were already in place, having penetrated deep into America’s academic, government, media, military, national security, and social fabric over the course of decades. The first thing they did together with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was gain control of counterterrorism language. Not later than 2004, an organization called “True Speak,” whose advisors included the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and Yousef al-Qaradawi (the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader) began promoting a lexicon to the Intelligence Community that avoided words like “jihad” – even though the 9/11 Commission Report that same year used “jihad” more than 100 times and “Islam” over 300 times.

Over the next few years, every major U.S. national security and counterterrorism document was purged of any inference that the incubator of Islamic terrorism is Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture. By 2012, U.S. government training courses about Islam had removed instructors and material that accurately identified the Islamic jihadist enemy or connected that enemy with the actual source of his inspiration: shariah Islam. Officially stripped of their ability to know and name the jihadist enemy, national security officials increasingly fell under the spreading influence of Muslim Brotherhood front groups and their message that “Islam means peace,” the Brotherhood is “moderate,” and the only enemy is al-Qa’eda with its kinetic terrorism.

In January 2009, a young Muslim intern named Huma Abedin was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton, the new Secretary of State. Somehow the usual security clearance regulations pertaining to clearing someone with immediate family members living abroad who are involved in activities such as attempting to influence or overthrow the government of the U.S. must have been overlooked for Ms. Abedin, because as Rep. Bachmann appropriately noted in her letter to the State Department, she has/had at least three immediate family members (her late father, mother, and brother) “connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.”

As detailed in this letter, important U.S. domestic and foreign policy decisions supported by Secretary Clinton over the last 3 years have proven enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood, both domestically and abroad. Not least of these have been the involvement of the Clinton State Department in the OIC’s Istanbul Process, whose stated objective is to criminalize the criticism of Islam, and the wholesale U.S. backing for the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power across North Africa and the Middle East. Such developments are deeply inimical to the national security interests of the U.S. and our allies (especially Israel) and it is not only appropriate, but incumbent upon Congressional oversight committees, to question the potential for undue influence from individuals and groups intent on “destroying Western civilization from within.”

The folly of not taking our enemies at their word has already claimed too many victims, as the FBI report describing how the FBI failed to stop Maj. Nidal Hassan before the Ft. Hood jihad massacre out of political correctness demonstrates. Reps. Bachmann, Gohmert, Franks, Westmoreland, and Rooney deserve our admiration and support for their courageous leadership in the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Citing specific cases, the letters were sent just one day after Neil Munro at the Daily Caller revealed that the Justice Department Inspector General had launched an investigation into the FBI’s ongoing contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), despite a stated policy of having no contacts with the group after FBI agents testified and numerous exhibits were entered into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial that showed CAIR was a front for Hamas.

Even before the conclusion of the Holy Land Foundation trial, federal prosecutors had said in court filings in the Sabri Behkahla appeal that “Moreover, from its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.” (pg. 58, fn 13)

That Inspector General investigation was launched after White House Director for Community Partnerships told Munro that the administration had “hundreds” of contacts with CAIR despite the FBI’s stated policy.

In February 2010 letter to members of Congress from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, he explained the evidence from the Holy Land Foundation trial implicating CAIR in the Hamas support conspiracy.

So that’s the context for the dust-up last week between Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rep. Keith Ellison (Ellison is the first Muslim member of Congress). After the DOJ Inspector General announced he was looking into the FBI/CAIR contacts, the five members of Congress sent their letters to the respective Inspectors General asking them to investigate specific incidents of known or possible Muslim Brotherhood front group’s influence with these government agencies.

In response, last Thursday Ellison sent a letter to all five members demanding that they provide sources for the claims in their Inspector General request letters. Half of Ellison’s letter was an ad hominem attack on Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. A number of media outlets, including the Huffington Post and Bachmann’s hometown newspaper, the St. Cloud Times, jumped into the fray attacking the signatories of the request letters for “Islamophobia” and ne0-McCarthism.

What they didn’t expect is that less than 24 hours later Bachmann would respond with a 16-page rejoinder with 59 footnotes to original sources backing up their claims.

I do note that the facts we presented in the Inspector General request letters are based on information presented by U.S. Government officials in court documents, court evidence, correspondence and briefings with Congress and public statements, in addition to known media reporting. These letters were far from sole-sourced as you maintain in your letter.

Throughout the letter, Bachmann notes that Ellison had deliberately misrepresented the facts stated in the Inspector General request letters to gin up his “Islamophobia conspiracy” accusations.

What follows is an impressive point-by-point systematic dismantling of Ellison. Click the link to read the letter:

At the end of the letter, Bachmann states that since sending the June 13th letters, additional information has come forth to raise even greater questions:

Since we sent the Inspector General letters requesting further investigation, other shocking incidents have occurred. Chief among these was the decision just a few weeks ago by the State Department to give a member of an Egyptian designated terrorist group (which is still listed as such by the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism54) a visa to not only enter the country in violation of the federal laws prohibiting material support for terrorism, but to be granted a meeting inside the White House with National Security Council officials.55

The terror group member used the opportunity of his White House visit to call for the release of the imprisoned leader of his organization, the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and later planned terror plots inside the U.S.56

She finishes the letter by observing the duplicity with which the U.S. Government has handled its Muslim outreach by saying one thing about terror-tied Islamic groups in federal court, and then pretending that such information doesn’t exist day-to-day:

Administration prosecutors and investigators have made statements backed up by considerable evidence in court raising serious concerns about many of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups, but the day-to-day operation of these departments and agencies continue “outreach” programs involving these exact same organizations as if the evidence presented in federal court or statements made in search warrant applications doesn’t exist.

In light of the information revealed during the Holy Land Foundation trial, the FBI officially cut ties with CAIR because of their activities in support of Hamas.57And yet just last month the new White House Director for Community Partnerships admitted that this administration has had “hundreds” of meetings with CAIR in spite of the FBI’s stated policy.58It has been reported the White House has worked to conceal these ties (in one case, with ISNA and MPAC).59

As members of Congress, we are charged to oversee and hold accountable all government agencies – a charge given to us by the Constitution on behalf of the citizens of the United States. To do anything less is to subvert the oaths we took as members to protect and defend the Constitution. For us to fail to demand action on the part of the Inspector Generals on this matter is to fail to uphold the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

It has to be said that when it comes to federal prosecutors identifying Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States, Rep. Keith Ellison is no disinterested observer.

Back in December 2008, Ellison took a hajj trip to Saudi Arabia funded by the Muslim American Society (MAS).

But in fact, more than a year before, federal prosecutors also addressed the origins of MAS in the Sabri Benkahla appeal, stating that “MAS was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” The Chicago Tribune in September 2004 wrote an extensive expose of MAS as a recruitment and ideological training ground for the extremist international Muslim Brotherhood.

As Fox Newsnoted the following year when Ellison finally had to disclose in congressional filings that MAS had paid for his trip, Ellison had been a keynote speaker at the MAS 2007 and 2008 annual national convention. He has also been a regular speaker at events for CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which were identified by the Justice Department in the Holy Land Foundation trial as Muslim Brotherhood fronts.

So in this case we have a congressman with extensive and documented ties to organizations identified by the U.S. government as Muslim Brotherhood fronts going to the media and attacking fellow colleagues for raising the issue of Muslim Brotherhood influence in the federal government. Such is the Kafkaesque world we live in.

The media’s response to Bachmann’s letter over the weekend is also instructive.

Yes, there is a Huma Abedin angle to this story but a certain Muslim Congressman seems to be in the middle of digging himself a bit of a hole.

On July 12th, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Muslim-MN) sent a two-page letter to the five congressmen who sent five separate letters to five separate Inspectors General on June 13th. The June 13th letters raised serious concerns about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration inside the U.S. Government. Among the concerns raised with the OIG at the State Department are the familial connections of Hillary Clinton’s closest aide – Huma Abedin – to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ellison attempted to pit Bachmann against Republicans like Herman Cain and Chris Christie by pointing out that her source in the June 13th letters seemed to be one person – Frank Gaffney. Gaffney has rightfully been very critical of said Republicans in the past for their comments and actions relative to Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

Moreover, Ellison seemed to allege in his July 12th letter that Gaffney was Bachmann’s only source.

Here is how Ellison ended that letter:

Despite Mr. Gaffney’s record of unsubstantiated allegations, you appear to have based your letters to the Inspectors General on his views.

I request that you provide my office a full accounting of the sources you used to make the serious allegations against the individuals and organizations in your letters. If there is not credible, substantial evidence for your allegations, I sincerely hope that you will publically (sic) clear their names.

Ask and ye shall receive, Congressman…

Bachmann responded to Ellison by sending him a 16-page bombshell (via SC Times) that is strewn with 59 separate footnotes, proving unequivocally that Gaffney is hardly her only source. Says Bachmann:

I do note that the facts we presented in the Inspector General request letters are based on information presented by U.S. Government officials in court documents, court evidence, correspondence and briefings with Congress and public statements, in addition to known media reporting. These letters were far from sole-sourced as you maintain in your letter.

While I can’t speak on behalf of the other signatories of these letters, nor am I able to get into the private discussions and documentation received by the various House committees represented by the signatories on these matters that motivated these letters to the various Inspectors General, out of respect to you I am happy to respond to some of your concerns, provide the sources you ask for, as well as clarify a few points that may have been misunderstood or misrepresented.

Furthermore, Ellison’s defense of groups that should be identified as enemies of the United States puts him in dangerous territory and Bachmann exploited it. In citing the Holy Land Foundation Trial – along with attempts by CAIR and ISNA to be removed from unindicted co-conspirator list – Bachmann quotes from the Judge’s declination of that request:

Finally, CAIR, NAIT, and ISNA ask the Court to strike their names from any public document filed or issued by the government (Mot. at 6.) While it is clear from the Briggs line of cases that the Government should have originally filed the unindicted co-conspirators’ names under seal, the Court declines to strike CAIR, ISNA and NAIT’s names from those documents. The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas. (Bachmann’s letter cites the Judge’s Memorandum Opinion Order)

Ellison is dangerously close to outwardly defending groups tied to Hamas – a designated terrorist organization – and he’s doing so on the Congressional record. Bachmann basically check-mates Ellison in the very next sentence:

It should be noted that Article 2 of the Hamas Covenant identifies Hamas as a Muslim Brotherhood entity while Article 7 calls for the global killing of all Jews (Bachmann cites – of all things – Yale Law School).